OGL? SUccess or failure?

[ColonelHardisson]

That's ironic, because I consider the short term to be where it has got the blackest eye (over low quality stuff that came out when the d20 logo was still pretty much a free ticket for untried and/or untalented publisher) and it seems to me that just now is the d20 market starting to mature and put out some really high quality stuff.

Yep. You made a point I considered trying to make, but just couldn't articulate well enough to make sense.

 

[Crothian]

Further, in one fell swoop, it successfully acheived one of the biggest goals I could possibly have for it: it prevents Rob Repp from ever happening again.

what is Rob Repp????

 

[Mithran]

*drops napalm on Rasyr then parachutes down to finish the job with a flamer*
Sorry, but somebody had to do it.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

First - one of the stated purposes of the OGL was to reduce the overall number of systems on the market. This has not happened.

That's amusing-- I can't imagine how someone would think the OGL could accomplish that, especially since the system most covered by the OGL is not suitable for every genre or playstyle.

It has, however, acheived a relatively similar goal-- it has reduced the number of systems most players have to learn in order to experience a very broad variety of games in several different genres.

Second ... This had the effect of effectively flooding the market with product, a good portion of it of questionable quality

While I will readily concede this point-- having bought a number of questionable products myself-- I do not see how this will affect the long term success or failure of the OGL experiment. There has always been a very large supply of questionable RPG material, along with a smaller supply of truly excellent material.

Now, there are orders of magnitude more examples of both-- and the truly excellent material is more useful now because of cross-applicability.

1) Companies are moving away from the OGL in general, and the d20 license in particular. The release of 3.5 had a very sobering effect on many companies. They realized that WotC could quite easily cause major havoc everytime a new edition was released.

This is definitely a troublesome point-- though releasing a new edition does not invalidate previous OGC, so even a Closed new edition would be unable to completely destroy that market.

While RPG sales are driven by new products, there is nothing preventing new products from being built atop decades-old OGC. Just because a game was originally based on mechanics derived from Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition doesn't mean that the game's newest supplements are out-of-date because Dungeons & Dragons is on its fourth.

The degree of innovation being shown with d20 and d20-like mechanics indicates that this market can persist even if Dungeons & Dragons is no longer the center of it. (Though, I will admit it would persist in considerably reduced fashion.)

2) ... This is because as they move away, they are beginning to split the customer base. No longer is it just D&D and lots of supplements. Now you have D&D, C&C, Arcane Evolved, Iron Heroes, Mutants & Masterminds, True20, Spycraft, Grim Tales, and more. All vying for the same customers.

Not all of these products are direct competitors-- I cannot use Spycraft or Grim Tales to run a superhero action game, nor could I use Mutants & Masterminds to run survival horror. Each competes, more or less within its own genre, with the use of similar mechanics as a benefit mostly for people who desire to play multiple games in different genres.

In this aspect, the OGL is failing, as one of the core precepts of it was to allow other companies to support D&D, and sorry, but True20, IH, AE, and all the rest are not D&D.

I think, on this point, you drastically overestimate the "pulling away" from d20 and OGL, as well as the production of alternate d20 systems. Far, far more products are made in direct support of D&D than as d20-based alternatives to it.

3) Another of the precepts of the OGL was to create a large body of open gaming content that was easy for others to use ... However, while there are some re-uses of OGC, it is not really all that wide-spread.

However, there are teams of designers and archivists working on this problem-- note the handful of SRD projects dedicated to extracting the OGC from existing products.

You note later on that many companies are adamantly opposed to this-- but at the same time, they continue to publish products with OGC in them. Despite their complaints, they continue to contribute to the growing library of OGC systems and solutions.

5) As I mentioned above, I think the ultimate success or failure of the OGL rests in what happens when WotC releases 4E.

I do not agree; the cat is out of the bag, and even if Wizards distances itself from the OGL, they won't be able to do more than diminish the amount of new open content produced every year.

There are a number of d20 publishers out there that are prominent enough to pick it up and run with it-- D&D may be the most popular RPG on the market, but it's not the only one that can benefit from third-party support.

While OGL products may continue for a few years (my guess is 10 years max) if 4E is not OGL, they will, IMO, eventuallystart fading away and the OGL will be nothing more than a memory and a footnote.

Among your arguments, I think this is the most flawed, for the reason noted above. The bulk of d20 companies might fold, but there are a couple of players big enough to survive it-- and their own need for a customer base will force them to take advantage.

So let the flaming begin!

Wrong thread. Aren't we talking about D&D in this one?

 

[Napftor]

what is Rob Repp????

Some admittedly hasty Googling tells me that he was the online presence at TSR before the net was really used heavily by us gamers. Seems he gave his two weeks notice almost immediately after hiring Sean K Reynolds, who was then stuck with Rob's pile of stuff to do.

 

[Psion]

I have no idea who/what this is. Sounds interesting. Would you be willing to give some backstory for the ignorant (me, in other words)?

Those who were active on the internet in the waning days of 2e should know of what I speak.

TSR, in it's late days, went from having a very hands off net policy to having a very agressive one. One online representative, one Rob Repp, was notorious for contacting the ISP of anyone hosting any material that could be tied to D&D and did his level best to have them shut down.

I came late enough to the net that I didn't already have a lot online, but the chilling effect online was pretty hideous. The idea that the OGL could copyleft the mechanics and several key associated concepts, while probably little comfort to those who wrote about IP like Greyhawk, was very appealing to me because it guaranteed that I could publish whatever I liked about my game so long and I respected the fairly generous IP limits.

Anyway, these attitudes towards customers were an ugly period in customer relations on the internet and the OGL gave me some faith that they would not happen again.

 

[RFisher]

To me the OGL has been a success in that, through it, a lot of material has been made freer. (As in "free speech", not as in "free beer".) And I'm not just talking about the WotC SRDs. Their example led some others to release under the OGL or a similar license.

 

[Campbell]

A little minor googling turned up this piece of email quoted on a gaming fan site.

Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 17:28:59 –0400
From: TSRInc@aol.com
To: postmaster@rigel.cs.pdx.edu
Subject: TSR Copyrighted Material
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR:
Your site was recently included in a list of noted FTP sites for DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND
DRAGONS gaming material. You should be aware that DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and all related marks and properties are copyrighted by
TSR, Inc. of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
You should also be aware that any items created without a specific license are infringements of TSR copyrights. Such items include (but are not
limited to) any software, net.books, modules, tables, stories, or rules modifications which contain elements from our copyrighted properties,
including characters, settings, realm names, noted magic items, spells, elements of the gaming system, such as ARMOR CLASS, HIT DICE, and
so forth. To date, TSR has not licensed any of these net publications.
On behalf of TSR, Inc. I ask that you examine your public net sites at this time and remove any material which infringes on TSR copyrights.
Our intention is to find a way to license these and future creative efforts. In the meantime, remove them from your sites without delay.
Please feel free to contact me with comments or questions. I will refer any pertinent queries to our legal department as soon as I receive them.
Rob Repp, Manager, Digital Projects Group, TSR, Inc.

 

[Mokona]

D&D sustains the OGL. If current D&D support from WotC isn't part of the OGL then the OGL will begin to fail. Because the link between D&D and the OGL is key, if 4th edition (when it releases sooner or later) isn't OGL then the OGL is going to die.

There continues to be what amounts to a small stream of new games coming out every year. It may have hiccupped a little bit at first, but the stream continues (Meddling Kids, WHFRP2, Storyteller, Burning Wheel, HARP, etc...) I do not really see a decrease in the number of game systems. In this instance, I would say that it was unsuccessful.

White Wolf's Vampire and Palladium's RIFTS used to be huge games but now they are shadows of their former selves. Few other explanations exist for the fall of D&D's competitors than the OGL.

 

[Mercule]

TSR, in it's late days, went from having a very hands off net policy to having a very agressive one. One online representative, one Rob Repp, was notorious for contacting the ISP of anyone hosting any material that could be tied to D&D and did his level best to have them shut down.

Ah. Now I have a name to attach to those days. I guess you could say that Rob Repp is the single biggest factor in my leaving 2E. Sure, I had some general ennui with the system, already, but it was the push to shut down fan sites that finally convinced me to exit the game. My disgust at the way things were handled made me so certain that I'd not return to D&D that, not only did I sell all my books, I threw 150+ pages of house rules, custom stat blocks, etc. into the trash.

After leaving 2E in such a manner, you can image how impressed I was with 3E to even ponder returning.